Even MacBook Pros have bad days, and mine is a cantankerous old bitch from 2015 who has been nagging me for the past year to be put in a retirement home. If only I could, I kept telling her. Well today was apparently the last straw and she just got up and ditched me. Didn’t even bother to leave a suicide note for courtesy’s sake.
Thank goodness my decrepid and aged iPad mini is still as fit as a geriatric cat, and was willing to be pulled out of retirement. And pull I did, including the keyboard that goes with it. I had to smile though, because this setup has been with me through sick and sin, oh sorry, I meant thick and thin, basically to hell and back. I wrote and re-edited book chapters on this, strained my eyesight to edit photos, and went through the painstaking trouble to upload the blogs by hook or by crook, like today.
My little setup is cute, and almost romantic, because it has been with me to cafes, on trains and planes, and is as inconspicuous as well trained spy. So while I revive and relive some precious memories on this, I eye my dead MacBook in the background with utmost contempt. For all intents and purposes, I am a woman scorned by Mac and my wrath knows no limit for the foreseeable future.
Seriously though, it is times like these when you realise how horribly dependent we are on our electronics, especially during these turbulent times when the Internet has transmogrified into our lifeline to civilization. At least I had the presence of mind to back up all my relevant files on an external harddrive AND the cloud, so even if my hardware dies, like today, there is no cause to panic. Those of you who know me longer are aware of my penchant for always having a Plan B and C in my pocket.
I took the electronic death with solemnity and a grain of salt – and added five cups of flour to make my royally-pissed-off frustration bread. Out of sheer vengeance, I added three handfuls of raisins to go with it, which I rarely do. If there is such a thing as an aroma orgasm, the smell of artisan bread baking in the oven is it for me. It is calming, soothing, and grounding. It anchors me to a place where food and nourishment are far more important to the soul than a laptop.
I think I would have been far more distressed if my cameras had crashed and burned, but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. All these things can be replaced, but thoughts and inspiration can’t. If all else fails, I have tons of old bills with pristine back sides that can be used, and I can rekindle an old love affair with pens and pencils, Hemingway style, although that would inevitably necesitate some whiskey.
Today was definitely my no-guts-no-glory Tuesday. After an invigorating shower this morning, I stared at my reflection in the mirror and decided today was the day I was going to try my hand at trimming my hair with the electric razor. I’ve been cutting my own hair for the past three years, basically ever since I arrived in Berlin, snipping blindly behind my back with a lot of faith and a crap load of self confidence. Humility aside, I think I do a pretty decent job for the most part. I make my daughter nervous each time she sees me with scissors in hand facing the mirror, but she kindly straightens things out for me afterwards. Since she is currently not around to freak out at my latest adventure, so bravely I charged the electric razor and nonchalantly went zoooooom zoooooom. The cats know the sound all to well and stayed clear away from me, for fear that they might be next. Let’s just say it was a learning experience and I didn’t carve out any new paths in unnecessary places. Nothing that gel and the blowdrier couldn’t fix, or tweak afterwards.
FrogDiva Thoughts 